Thanksgiving Roundup

Lots of great postings at Maggie's Farm.

See, "Weds. morning links."

Also, "'A day of public thanksgiving and prayer'," and "Giving thanks for the invisible hand, the kaleidoscopic energy and productivity of the free market, and no turkey czar."

And from Maggie's we head to Pirate's, who provides the lovely lady at left. Plus, "If All You See…(Turkey Day Edition)."

Now from Daley Gator, who posts some reciprocal linkage, "And the push for full blown Socialized Medicine commences." Plus, "Girl getting bullied over her afro told to cut her hair or leave school by sorry admins."

At AoSHQ, "Thanksgiving Day Footballs," and "Margaret Carlson: Is the President's Intellect Finally Engaged By the Catastrophe of Obamacare?"

Also from Mandy Nagy, at Legal Insurrection, "How not to fry a turkey for Thanksgiving."

And at Egotastic!, "Staci Noblett Chest Thumps Sabine Jemeljanova in a Thanksgiving Edition Battle of the Boobtastic."

At This Ain't Hell, "Thanksgiving feel good story," and "More ObamaCare 'Goodness'."

More at Right Wing News, "Communist Party urges members to protect Obamacare by crying 'Racism!'" (What a surprise!)

Now at Protein Wisdom, "'And So It Begins: New York Sending Out Gun Confiscation Notices'."

Check out Stormbringer as well, "IT WAS TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY - Today is an extra special Thanksgiving Day here at Firebase TigerLily and its all because of something that happened twenty years ago."

And from Ed Driscoll, "‘As God is My Witness, I Thought Obamacare Could Fly’."

At Blackmailers Don't Shoot, "This Crazy Week, Undaunted Edition," and "California High Speed Rail Screeches to a Halt."

And at Knuckledraggin' My Life Away, "Your Good Morning Girl."

More from Drunken Stepfather, "ROSE MCGOWAN IS NAKED IN SOME STUDENT FILM SHIT OF THE DAY."

At 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Girls With Guns."

And from First Street Journal, "Happy Thanksgiving..."

Still more from Diogenes' Middle Finger, "I Wish You All a Happy Thanksgiving."

Check out iOWNTHEWORLD, "Custom Crafted Michelle Obama Toilet."

Now hilariously at the Other McCain, "Happy #FreeKate Thanksgiving: Lesbian Cheerleader Spends Holiday in Jail."

And from the Mad Jewess, "Have a Swell Thanksgiving Day & Weekend."

And finally, at Camp of the Saints, "Thanksgiving 2013 A.D."

Now, if I missed your blog, just drop your links in the comments and I'll get you linked up at the next roundup. Have a great day!

How to Spend Thanksgiving Alone

I don't think I've ever spent Thanksgiving alone, although there've been times I was lonely.

I worked construction the day after Thanksgiving one year. My boss made me do drywall sanding and preparation. I don't think anyone else was on the job, but he had me out there doing prep. That's when I had my own apartment, and my mom was remarried. I wasn't going to my dad's in Fresno. I was lonely sometimes back then.

I'm not so lonely these days, which is good.

In any case, at GQ, "The GQ Guide to Spending Thanksgiving Alone":

Can't afford a plane ticket home this year? Busy working? Parents dead? FEAR NOT. Just because you're cocooned in debilitating isolation this Turkey Day doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourself. Here's how to make the most of every single solitary hour.

Read it at the link.

The Real Fix for #ObamaCare

Why, the full-blown government takeover of healthcare.

Single-payer "Medicare-for-all," via communist RoseAnn DeMoro, at the far-left Guardian UK, "The real fix for Obamacare's flaws: Medicare for all":

Website delays – the most unwelcome news for computer acolytes since the tech boom crashed – are not the biggest problem with the ACA, as will become increasingly apparent long after the signup headaches are a distant memory.

What prompted the ACA was a rapidly escalating healthcare nightmare, seen in 50 million uninsured, medical bills plunging millions into un-payable debt or bankruptcy, long delays in access to care, and record numbers skipping needed treatment due to cost.

The main culprit was our profit-focused system, with rising profiteering by a massive health care industry, and an increasing number of employers dropping coverage or just dumping more costs onto workers.

The ACA tackles some of the most egregious inequities: lack of access for many of the working poor who will now be eligible for Medicaid or subsidies to offset some of their costs for buying private insurance through the exchanges, a crackdown on several especially notorious insurance abuses, and encouragement of preventive care.

But the law actually further entrenches the insurance-based system through the requirement that uncovered individuals buy private insurance. It's also chock full of loopholes.

Some consumers who have made it through the website labyrinth have found confusing choices among plans which vary widely in both premium and out of pocket costs even with the subsidies, a pass through of public funds to the private insurers.

The minimum benefits are also somewhat illusory. Insurance companies have decades of experience at gaming the system and warehouses full of experts to design ways to limit coverage options.

The ACA allows insurers to cherry pick healthier enrollees by the way benefit packages are designed, and as a Washington Post article noted on 21 November, consumers are discovering insurers are restricting their choice of doctors and excluding many top ranked hospitals from their approved "network".

The wide disparity between the healthcare you need, what your policy will cover, and what the insurer will actually pay for remains.

Far less reported is what registered nurses increasingly see – financial incentives within the ACA for hospitals to prematurely push patients out of hospitals to cheaper, less regulated settings or back to their homes. It also encourages shifting more care delivery from nurses and doctors to robots and other technology that undermines individual patient care, and that may work no better than the dysfunctional ACA websites.

Is there an alternative? Most other developed nations have discovered it, a single-payer or national healthcare system.

 More at the link. (And don't miss the comments, where conservatives hilariously trolled the thread.)

I checked out this lady, Ms. DeMoro. She's the executive director of the National Nurses Organizing Committee, a political action group for National Nurses United and the AFL-CIO. In other words, she's a communist. She's got an interview with far-left propagandist Bill Moyers, available at the NNU homepage. And quoted here, "What Do Real Socialists Say About Obama’s Health Care “Reform”?"

PHOTO CREDIT: Zombie, "SF Protesters to Obama: Please Be a Dictator!"

Embattled White House Delays #ObamaCare Enrollment for Small Businesses

Holiday weekend news dump.

Politico reports, "Small business Obamacare online enrollment delayed a year":

The Obama administration today announced a one year delay of online enrollment for small businesses looking to purchase health coverage through federal Obamacare exchanges, another high-profile setback for HealthCare.gov.

It’s the second delay for online small business enrollment, which the administration had said would begin this month.

The White House is trying to get the troubled enrollment website on track for individuals and families seeking coverage, which is a higher priority. It set this Saturday, Nov. 30, as a target date for getting HealthCare.gov working for the “vast majority” of users.

The delay of the small business exchanges comes as little surprise, as the administration had said earlier this week it would offer alternative ways for small businesses to enroll. Still, it undercuts the White House message that it’s beginning to turn around the disastrous rollout of the health care law.

The administration is focused on its goal of signing up 7 million through Obamacare exchanges through the individual marketplaces. That doesn’t count on small business enrollment, which is why Obamacare critics and advocates say the small-business exchanges, known as SHOP, are further down on the administration’s priority list.

The announcement just before Thanksgiving is the latest in a series of delays and miscalculations for the president’s signature domestic legislation. On July 2 — also just before a holiday —it delayed the employer mandate for a year. Small businesses with fewer than 50 workers are exempt from the requirement to cover them, and the exchanges are supposed to give more options to those that choose to offer coverage.

House Speaker John Boehner said the delay is more proof that the law should be repealed or delayed.

“The president bit off more than he can chew with this health care law, and small businesses are now forced to bear the consequences,” he said in a statement.

Continue reading.

Also at Jammie Wearing Fools, "Thanksgiving News Dump: Obama to Announce Yearlong Delay of Online Enrollment for Small Businesses." And Hot Air, "Holiday news dump: WH to delay online ObamaCare exchange for small businesses for one year."

Increasingly Leftist Colleges Abandon Greats and Teach Garbage

At IBD, "Colleges Substitute Western Greats With Gender Studies":

Parents pay a fortune to send their kids to big-name colleges, and they expect strong scholarship in return. More and more, what they're getting ranges from drivel to leftist indoctrination.

Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald shocked a New York City audience at the 2013 Wriston Lecture this month with some examples of what leftist academics have done to the American college curriculum.

"Until 2011," she noted, "students majoring in English at UCLA had been required to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton — the cornerstones of English literature.

"Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the 'empire,' UCLA junked these individual author requirements and replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a course each in gender, race, ethnicity, disability or sexuality studies, imperial, transnational or post-colonial studies, and critical theory."

As Mac Donald put it, "In other words, the UCLA faculty was now officially indifferent as to whether an English major had ever read a word of Milton, Chaucer or Shakespeare, but was determined to expose students, according to the course catalogue, to 'alternative rubrics of gender, sexuality, race and class.'"

More at the link.

It's bad all over, but UCLA's extra special, with all that "micro-agression" racism, or whatever. See College Insurrection, "UCLA Prof accused of racist “micro-aggression” for correcting student grammar."

Also at Inside Higher Ed, "In-Class Sit-In."

Leftists Splintered Over #ObamaCare

From Charles Cooke, at National Review, "New Republic Editor: Obamacare ‘Is a Threat to Liberalism’."

I posted on this as well, "Sinking #ObamaCare Will Take Entire Cesspool of Radical Progressivism Down With It."

Iran Nuclear Deal Furthers Obama Goal of Destruction of Israel

From Caroline Glick, at RCP, "The Goal of Obama's Foreign Policy":

Over the past year, Obama has engaged in systematically weakening Israel’s position both regionally and in Washington. Regionally, the US has forced Israel into talks with the Palestinians that are engineered to weaken Israel strategically and diplomatically. The US has delegitimized Israel’s legal rights to sovereignty and self-defense, while effectively justifying Palestinian terrorism as a legitimate response to Israeli actions – which themselves were perfectly legal. So, too, the US has given a green light to the EU’s illegal, discriminatory economic war against Israel.

Beyond that, the Obama administration has significantly expanded the prospect of war between Israel and Syria by leaking Israeli strikes against Syrian targets that posed a threat to Israel’s security.

The US has also weakened Israel’s capacity to take steps short of war to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons possessing state by leaking key components of Israel’s covert operations against Iran’s nuclear program.

In the US, the Obama administration has targeted Israel’s American supporters. This has been advanced, first and foremost, by actively weakening AIPA C. As Lee Smith explained in Tablet, the administration has taken three key steps to neutralize AIPA C as an effective force in Washington.

It has supported J Street and so legitimized anti-Israel policymaking.

Obama appointed outspoken critics of the US-Israel alliance to key positions in his national security team. First and foremost in this arena was his appointment of Chuck Hagel to serve as defense secretary.

Finally, Obama discredited AIPA C, painting it as an unthinking warmonger by forcing the group to lobby Congress to support his helter-skelter rush to war against Syria. The coup de grace was Obama’s sudden abandonment of his plans to bomb Syria, which left AIPA C high and dry, looking like an anti-Semitic caricature of itself.

The culmination of this long process of delegitimizing Israel as a warmongering, ungrateful ally and its supporters as turncoats who are forcing the US to endanger itself for the benefit of the Jewish state was the administration’s hysterical campaign against Israel and its supporters in the lead-up to Saturday’s signing ceremony in Geneva. Everyone, from the White House to Kerry, accused Israel and its supporters of trying to force the US to fight an unnecessary war.

When we consider Obama’s decision to wait for a year to sign the deal that enables Iran to become a nuclear power in the context of his main activities over the past year, we understand his foreign policy.

His goal is not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. It isn’t even to facilitate a rapprochement between America and Iran. The goal of Obama’s foreign policy is to weaken the State of Israel.

All the pathetic shills defending the administration's craven Iran diplomacy are simply enabling Israel's obliteration.

The Desolate Wilderness

At the Wall Street Journal, "This classic editorial has appeared annually since 1961."

Democrat Denial About #ObamaCare's Midterm Repercussions in 2014

Yes, I can see why Democrats are starting to freak over their party leadership's ObamaCare denial.

Here's Debbie Wasserman Schultz from last week, "Wasserman Schultz: 'You're Darn Right' We'll Run on Obamacare."

And now here's this at Politco, "Democrats worry leaders in denial on Obamacare":

Democratic leaders claim the bungled launch of Obamacare is just the latest news sensation — a media-stirred tempest that looks in the heat of the moment like it could upend the midterm election, but ends up fizzling well before voters head to the polls.

Some party strategists say they’re in denial.

And that perceived gap between party spin and facts on the ground is fueling worries that the White House and Democratic higher-ups aren’t taking the possible electoral blowback seriously enough or doing enough to shield their candidates. Democratic contenders in the toughest races are distinctly less convinced that Obamacare will fade as an election-year issue — and they can’t afford to just cross their fingers that things get ironed out or that Republicans revert to political hara-kiri.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at a forum hosted by BuzzFeed recently that the rollout won’t “hurt us in 2014,” adding that “we’re proud” of the law. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in a recent appearance on CNN, went so far as to assert that Obamacare would be “an advantage” for Democratic candidates next year.

“Democrats will run on the Affordable Care Act and win,” she has also told reporters.

The White House, meanwhile, has come across as equally dismissive of Obamacare’s consequences for 2014.

“The fact is that [the president] is focused on delivering the access to quality and affordable health insurance to the American people that the Affordable Care Act promises. He’s not concerned about the politics of that,” White House press secretary Jay Carney recently said.

Polls, however, suggest Democrats should be worried. A CBS News poll released Wednesday showed Obama with a 37 percent approval rating, his lowest figure ever in that survey. Another all-time low in the poll: approval of Obamacare, which stood at 31 percent.

Republicans are placing their chips on Obamacare as their defining 2014 issue and putting their money where their mouths are. The Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity has launched a $4 million TV ad offensive targeting House and Senate Democrats on the health care law. As much as they might be tempted, those on the receiving end can’t easily flee from the law because many or most of them voted for it.

“We’re trying to deny what everyone knows is happening,” said one Democratic pollster who is a veteran of competitive congressional races. “Anybody who is halfway intelligent knows this is a big … problem for us. It’s impossible not to see. We can try to hide our heads in the sand and pretend it’s not a problem, but it is.”

A Culture in Ruins

You gotta read this piece, from Victor Davis Hanson:

Why would a culture that canonizes a Kanye West, Miley Cyrus, or Lady Gaga have the discrimination to determine whether their chief executive tells the truth or lies? Obamacare is a great program in a way that West, Cyrus, and Gaga are great artists, in a way that more iPads will mean more geniuses.

Obama in Complete Electoral Freak-Out Mode: Issues Regs to Crush Conservative 501c Groups

The IRS targeting scandal was just the beginning.

The Obama White House will crush conservative interest group opposition if it's the last thing it does.

At the New York Times, "New Rules Would Rein In Nonprofits’ Political Role":

The Obama administration on Tuesday moved to curb political activity by tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, with potentially major ramifications for some of the biggest and most secretive spenders in American politics.

New rules proposed by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service would clarify both how the I.R.S. defines political activity and how much nonprofits are allowed to spend on it. The proposal covers not just television advertising, but bread-and-butter political work like candidate forums and get-out-the-vote drives.

Long demanded by government watchdogs and Democrats who say the flow of money through tax-exempt groups is corrupting the political system, the changes would be the first wholesale shift in a generation in the regulations governing political activity by nonprofits.

The move follows years of legal and regulatory shifts, including the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010, that have steadily loosened the rules governing political spending, particularly by those with the biggest bank accounts: corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.

But the proposal also thrusts the I.R.S. into what is sure to be a polarizing regulatory battle, with some Republicans immediately criticizing the proposal on Tuesday as an attack on free speech and a ploy to undermine congressional investigations into the agency’s handling of applications from Tea Party groups.

“Before rushing forward with new rules, especially ones that appear to make it harder to engage in public debate, I would hope Treasury would let all the facts come out first,” said Representative David Camp of Michigan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Political spending by tax-exempt groups — from Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, co-founded by the Republican strategist Karl Rove, to the League of Conservation Voters — skyrocketed to more than $300 million in 2012 from less than $5.2 million in 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Much of the money has been funneled through chains of interlinked nonprofit groups, making it even harder to determine the original source.

And unlike political parties and “super PACs,” political nonprofits are permitted to keep the names of donors confidential, making them the vehicle of choice for deep-pocketed donors seeking to influence campaigns in secret.

The new rules would not prohibit political activity by nonprofits. But by seeking to establish clearer limits for campaign-related spending by groups claiming tax exemption, the I.R.S. proposal could have an enormous impact on some of the biggest groups, forcing them to either limit their election spending or register as openly political organizations, such as super PACs.

A spokesman for Crossroads declined to comment, as did officials at other political nonprofits.

It's a blatant attempt to shut down the Koch brothers' advocacy groups and Crossroads, to say nothing of folks like Sheldon Adelson and the like.

This push just reeks of total panic. Pathetic desperation. And it won't work. Money in politics is like water in a stream. Once something blocks the flow, the stream finds another way to keep rolling down.

Election 2014 can't come too soon. I'm loving this.

NBC Nightly News: Large Employers Slash Health Coverage Ahead of #ObamaCare 'Cadillac Tax'

Employees at large firms are seeing their out-of-pocket expenses skyrocket.

Mary Katharine Ham reports, at Hot Air, "Large employers cite upcoming Obamacare Cadillac tax for reduced benefits":

See? There’s something in this law for everyone, just not exactly the way they said.

But take heart, America. Brian Williams of the NBC Nightly News is on it, sending investigative reporters to look into the “fine print” of Obamacare. Isn’t that something that would have been more useful four years ago?

Now NBC’s found out that large companies— add ‘em to the small companies and individual market plans—are also reducing benefits, raising co-pays and deductibles to cope with Obamacare’s new costs. So, if you have a catastrophic plan in the individual market, you’re losing the plan you may have liked for the privilege of paying more. If you had a middle-of-the-road individual market plan you liked, you’re losing that plan for the privilege of paying more often for fewer benefits. If you had a decent plan at a small employer, you’re likely to get dumped into the exchanges as mandate-heavy health care plans get too expensive for small businesses to afford. If you have a plan you like at a medium-sized employer, you’re likely to get dumped into the exchanges next year when the employer mandate kicks in, and your costs are already rising or benefits are going down. If you’re at a large employer with a very nice health insurance plan, sorry, you’re now going to have reduced benefits to avoid the “Cadillac” tax.

For 75 million Americans who get their insurance through large companies, the Affordable Care Act is a mixed bag. Experts tell NBC News the new healthcare law is only slightly increasing premiums next year, but causing some companies with the most generous plans to reduce their employees’ benefits.

Aaron Baker, 36, his wife Billie and their two young children are covered under a generous health insurance plan offered by the private Midwestern university where he’s worked for 10 years. When they opened their benefits notice this year, they were pleased to see their $385 premium is only up by four dollars next year. However, they were shocked to discover that instead of covering the first dollar they spend with no deductible, the Baker’s plan now includes a $1,000 deductible and a $2,500 out of pocket maximum. They also will still have small co-pays for services.

According to the enrollment notice, the changes are “to relieve future health plan trend pressure and to put the university in a position to avoid the excise tax that becomes effective in 2018.” The 40 percent excise tax—often called the “Cadillac tax”— is part of Obamacare and is levied on the most generous health plans. It’s designed to bring down overall health costs by making companies and workers more cost-conscious. The thinking is that if consumers have to pay more expenses themselves, through higher deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses, they’ll avoid unnecessary or overly costly procedures. And that is supposed to make care more affordable for everyone.

Billie Baker doesn’t think much of that concept. “I think that saying that your insurance is too good so we’re going to give you a penalty,” she said, “is sort of outrageous to me.”

Continue reading.

And here's my previous entry, "CBS 'This Morning': Millions to Lose Employer-Based Coverage Under #ObamaCare."

CBS 'This Morning': Millions to Lose Employer-Based Coverage Under #ObamaCare

I know Fox News has been all over the thrashing of employer-based coverage under ClusterCare, but even the leftist press is picking up on the story.

At CBS News, "Some small businesses cancelling health insurance plans for employees":

The Obama administration is promising the federal health care website, HealthCare.gov, will run smoothly by the end of this weekend. However, with that self-imposed deadline approaching, CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson learned some of those who get their insurance through work are losing their coverage.

Attkisson said on “CBS This Morning” that she learned that the government had earlier estimated that millions of workers would be dropped from their employee insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and for some it's already happening.

Continue reading.

And here's today's report at Fox, "Almost 80 million with employer health care plans could have coverage canceled, experts predict" (via Memeorandum).

Reader's Guide to the Coming #ObamaCare Traumas

At WSJ, "Manias, Panics and ObamaCare Crashes":

Our guess is that President Obama will try to power through all of this the way he always has: Blame others, stretch or break the law to plug the holes, squeeze insurers and try to keep Democrats from breaking ranks before the 2014 election. Perhaps it will work. But if the disruption spreads, and complaints multiply, don't be surprised if Democrats force the White House to reopen the law.

RTWT at the link.

Ace of Spades' Talking Points for Talking With Your Obnoxious Progressive Family Members About Obamacare This Thanksgiving

Heh.

It's good, at AoSHQ:

5. Remember when you gleefully, giddily declared the end of the Republican Party and a new era of Proud Progressive dominance? Yeah, the current political Big Story is whether or not Obamacare will wind up discrediting progressivism for just an election cycle or two, or as much as a generation. It looks like you were wrong about that.

RTWT at the link.

Sinking #ObamaCare Will Take Entire Cesspool of Radical Progressivism Down With It

From Franklin Foer, at the New Republic, "Obamacare's Threat to Liberalism."

I love how Foer refers to Obama's Democrat successor as a "her."

Hmm, who could that be?

Oh My! Just 40% Say Obama 'Can Manage the Government Effectively'

Man, the hits are like wallops now.

The raw numbers are at CNN's new poll.

And from Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, "CNN poll shows Obama personal qualities sliding underwater:

We are starting to see a broad polling trend for Barack Obama, and it should have the White House worried — but maybe Obama’s fellow Democrats in Congress even more. The latest CNN poll confirms what the Washington Post/ABC poll first noticed, and what the CBS poll corroborated — Obama’s approval decline involves more than just his performance. The Americans public is souring on Obama as a person and as a brand, and that spells real trouble for his agenda...

Continue reading.

Worst. President. Ever.

I've been saying that for a long time. The rest of the country is just now catching up with me.

Obama Heckler is Illegal Alien

Anderson Cooper tweets.

>@JimAcostaCNN reports heckler at Pres #Obama event is an undocumented immigrant. #AC360

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) November 26, 2013

#ObamaCare Will Not Cut Healthcare Costs

From Thomas Miller and Abby McCloskey, at WSJ, "The Next ObamaCare Mirage":

Supporters of President Obama are working overtime to backtrack from his promise that "If you like your health-care insurance, you can keep it. Period." While the president has conceded that this statement was inaccurate, the administration doesn't seem to have learned its lesson. The damage control plan is to spread another falsehood about the Affordable Care Act.

The claim this time is that the health-care "cost curve is bending, and the ACA is a significant part of the reason." That was what David Cutler —an influential Harvard economist and senior health-care adviser in Mr. Obama's 2008 presidential campaign—wrote in a Washington Post WPO -0.71%  op-ed on Nov. 10.

The president jumped on this theme in his press conference on Nov. 14. "I'm not going to walk away from something that has helped the cost of health care grow at its slowest rate in 50 years," he said. On Wednesday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers published a report claiming that "the ACA is contributing to the recent slow growth in health care prices and spending."

These assertions border on nonsense....

In his 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama promised that his health-care reform plan would save a typical family $2,500 in annual premiums by the end of his first term. This was Mr. Cutler's prediction, and it was based on projected rapid returns from larger federal investments in health-information technology, new reinsurance subsidies for high-cost workers, and savings on administrative costs for health insurance.

Those cost savings haven't materialized. Mr. Cutler maintains they will, mostly through other untested reforms, and the White House Council of Economic Advisers report points to potential savings from fledgling Accountable Care Organizations, lower Medicare reimbursements, value-based payments and hospital readmission penalties. To be sure, some of these programs have and may result in small savings, but they had little effect on savings claimed from 2010 to 2013. For example, even the president's Council of Economic Advisers hedges that some of the claimed savings from reduced hospital readmission rates "may not be entirely attributable to the ACA payment incentives."

CMS actuaries find that any positive effects of the ObamaCare delivery system experiments on the cost of health care "remain highly speculative." When they compare their September 2013 projections with earlier estimates in April 2010, these actuaries find that the law would increase national health spending higher than previously expected by an additional $27 billion in 2019 alone.

To argue that the Affordable Care Act has been and will be a key driver of slower health-care spending is irreconcilable with the most basic facts about such spending over the last decade, as well as with the judgment of the executive branch's own team of actuaries responsible for health-care accounting and future projections.

Magical communist gnomes were supposed to make this work, or something.

Donna Brazile's Hackiest #ObamaCare Hack Tweet

Man, just in time.

I needed a good laugh after work today, and Donna Brazile's got the goods.

At Twitchy, "‘Lunatic!’ Bless Donna Brazile’s heart: Hackiest Obamacare hack tweet in all of hackdom?"

No @donnabrazile, "The Biggest Problem With Obamacare’s Rollout" is that a deeply flawed law is working exactly as it was designed to.

— Lilac Sunday (@LilacSundayBlog) November 25, 2013